SA Affordable Housing September - October 2016 // Issue: 60 | Page 26

FEATURE

Urbanisation in South Africa has led to gridlock traffic situations in the cities.

New rural urbanised
landscape strategy
I want to respond to the article ‘A new landscape for our urban
spaces’ that repeats the inevitability of urbanisation, despite
numerous counter predictions of the devastating results.
By Antony V Trowbridge*

H

ere follows my summary of the situation, directly
related to all previous or current national
government development plans that have not had a
cogent Rural Development Plan to address rural-urban
migration, but which is currently being advanced with
designs for new rural towns that include African cultural
values of community financial management.
To attain the National Development Plan for the spatial
transformation of the urban landscape, involving liveable
and resilient towns and cities, the blind assumption of
leading planners and the inevitable migration of people
from rural to metropolitan areas, must be rejected as a
natural consequence of people seeking employment. This
because the labour needs of the industrial age have been
steadily reducing while the social problems of
unemployment, poverty, hunger and crime have increased,
along with welfare costs.

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SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2016

AFFORDABLE
SA HOUSING

When these exceeded income from rates and taxes, it led
to the bankruptcy of the state of Detroit in the United
States, a situation which confronts most towns and cities
today that need government grants to sustain them.
Such a situation was foreseen by many during the past
century. Professor Harold D Kaufmann embarked on a
study of all towns and cities in Mississippi and asked “Does
Mississippi need big Cities?” [1971] citing statistically:
“Undirected urbanisation is regarded increasingly as an
undesirable development strategy. The growth of too
many large cities is creating serious problems in crowding,
poverty and accompanying ills, especially in developing
countries. Evidence has been consistent over the years
that the larger the place, the higher the rates of crime and
personal disorder.
See page 26 for more.